Södertälje konsthall in collaboration with TUPILAK is very happy to host OUTing the Past: The International Festival of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Trans History 2019, as a hub part of the coming celebrations!

Södertälje konsthall is a municipality run art gallery in the Swedish city of Södertälje, an industrial city with 70.000 inhabitants very well known in Sweden for being the home of truck maker Scania AB. About 39 % of the inhabitants in the city have foreign background, which makes the city a place with connections to people all over the world.

OUTing the past will take place the 9th of March 2019, in between 11:00 and 15:00 at Södertälje konsthall, Lunagallerian, Södertälje.

11:00 Opening of the festival. Welcome speech by Bill Schiller, activist, journalist and former chairman of Tupilak, and Sarah Guarino Florén, curator/pedagogue at Södertälje konsthall and chairwoman of Tupilak (Swedish/English)

12:30 Inauguration of the exhibition Queering Sápmi with Elfrida Bergman

13:00 Lecture by Urszula (Ula) Chowaniec, Ph.D about Queer/Women in East and Central European Cinema (English)

14:00 “How to work with LGBTQ-issues and culture outside the big cities” - Panel discussion in between invited speakers and representatives from the local LGBTQ-association RFSL Södertälje.

Myths and Realities – A Lesbian Odyssey

-- a project that makes visible and explores lesbian (♥) past and present in Norrland.

This project investigates the boundaries between fact and fiction, myth and reality of the formational stories that underlie lesbian and queer identities and experiences. An ambulating lesbian museum designed and crafted by MYCKET in collaboration with MADAM snickeri has been touring the roads since March 2018 to spread, collect, and celebrate the lesbian and queer community with as many people as possible! Follow the project here.

Sara Lindquist and Elfrida Bergman lead the project. MYCKET creates the visual and spatial form. The association Lesbisk makt, Lesbian Power, runs the project with funding from Postdkodslotteriets kulturstiftelse, The Swedish Postcode Foundation.

(♥) Lesbian refers in this project to everyone who identifies as a lesbian, who has ever had a lesbian experience, who hopes to do something lesbian in the future, or who at some point in their lives related to lesbianism in some way. All genders and gender identities are welcome.

Queering Sápmi - Indigenous stories beyond the norm

Exhibition by Elfrida Bergman and Sara Lindquist

Specific & Universal - an invitation to a context where gender and sexuality is debated, looked at and thought about. The participants of the project share their thoughts about specific circumstances that have been important to them. When doing so they also hold up a mirror for us to look at our own life, choices we’ve made and how utterly vulnerable we all are to the outside world.

Queer/Women in East and Central European Cinema

The talk aims at presenting the most crucial gender, queer and feminist issues in contemporary Eastern and Central Europe. Main areas of investigation are the selected films that discussed in the contexts of various LGBTQ political, social, and cultural issues from 1980s to the present. The emphasis is given to Eastern Europe after 1989 with the references to the 20th-century past. Among the films are: Egymasra nezve/ Another Way by Karoly Makk (1982); Nadzór/ Control by Wiesław Saniewski (1985). Fine mrtve djevojke / Fine Dead Girls (Croatia, 2002) by Dalibor Matanic. Diˇsi duboko/ Take a Deep Breath by Dragan Marinković (Serbia, 2004), and others.

Urszula (Ula) Chowaniec, Ph.D. is Professor (dr hab.) at the Andrzej Frycz-Modrzewski Cracow Academy in Poland and the Research Fellow at University College London. Currently, during her research leave, she resides in Stockholm. She is an author of a monograph Melancholic Migrating Bodies in Contemporary Women’s Writing (2015) and W poszukiwaniu Kobiety: O wczesnych powieściach Ireny Krzywickiej (In Search for a Woman: Early Novels of Irena Krzywicka, Kraków 2007). She also edited and contributed to Women’s Voices and Feminism in Polish Cultural Memory(2012), Mapping Experience on Polish and Russian Women’s Writing (2010), Masquerade and Femininity. Essays on Polish and Russian Women Writers (2008). Her current research concentrate on women emancipation movement from the non-heterosexual perspectives, mainly concentrating on the movement in Eastern Europe, but also generally on the dialogues between women’s movement and lesbian emancipation as well as the connection between the development of the feminist language and the language of non-heteronormative sexualities.

She teaches among other course: Cotemporary Polish Women’s Writing; Gender and Body Politics in Literature and Film (Eastern-European Perspectives); Eastern Europe Through the Literary Nobel Prize Winners.